Small oil spill shuts down King Avenue for hours

CORPUS CHRISTI - KINGSVILLE — Firefighters and various environmental agencies worked for hours Wednesday to clean up a 40-gallon diesel spill after the fuel leaked into a storm drain that leads to an area creek.

About 10:30 a.m. Wednesday the fuel tank of an 18-wheeler punctured in the 1700 block of East King Ave., right outside the Kingsville Police Department, Capt. Jose Sandoval of the fire department said.

Sandoval said the diesel went into a drain leading to the Tranquitas Creek and King Avenue had to be shut down while firefighters and representatives from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas General Land Office worked to contain it.

He said because the storm drains were empty, firefighters were able to flush all the diesel into a waiting vacuum in about four hours.

While he considered the spill small, Sandoval said the amount of gallons that leaked qualify it as an incident that has to be reported to state agencies.